The Psychology of Expressive Violin Playing (Part 3)

In this post, I would like to address some of the psychology of playing expressively, as well as some more tips on phrasing that will greatly enhance your ability to impart emotion in your playing.

Let’s start with a few words about our psychology, or perhaps more appropriately, our self-consciousness. Allow me to share my own personal experience with this, and if you can relate, then this article might be helpful to you.

Master the Safe Elements

I grew up in a loving family, we always got along perfectly well, and I thought I had the best family on earth! As I grew older though, and gained more perspective, I realized that the reason we all got along so well was due to the fact that none of us showed our true feelings, nobody rocked the boat. There was no fighting, but there was also very little of hugs or “I love you’s”. Long story short, what I had to learn was that I was actually a very “closed” person emotionally, and I apparently never let my feelings show. Looking back in retrospect, it was actually pretty bad, and I did not have the tools or maturity to understand what was holding me hostage.

So, imagine me as I got more and more advanced on violin. I was longing for that expressive sound, but had NO IDEA how to convey it. I knew how I wanted to sound, I did my homework, and listened to the masters. But when I tried to do it, I felt too naked, stripped bare, as if my diary were laying open in front of my teacher or my audience. My musical expression was locked up with my personal inhibition about self-expression.

Finally, as I was confessing my problem to a foreign exchange student who barely knew me, (that felt safest)…he laughed at me, and gave me the best advice EVER! He said, “Don’t worry so much about playing expressively! Just play the music, obey all the dynamics, and by the time you’ve got everything right, the expression will be there!” I felt liberated! You mean I don’t have to wear my heart on my sleeve, and hand out copies of my deepest fears and darkest secrets to members of the audience? Cool!

For me, with my deep seated fear of any emotional expression, I was over-personalizing it, and therefore making it harder than it had to be. YES, music is personal! However, if you are struggling with expressive playing due to your own inhibitions or self-consciousness, then you need to focus more on all the specific things you can do that are not personal. Like these:

find the phrase structure, then learn to shape the phrase (another topic of my Suzuki Book 2 class)

find certain notes that are more important than others, and give them a little “colle tug”. (Suzuki Book 2!)

find a cool spot where you can make an expressive, juicy shift

You will be so busy doing all these things that it will distract you from your inhibitions and self-consciousness. Take baby steps, and you will eventually become accustomed to inviting your audience to peer inside your soul, in fact, you will start to treasure the experience.

I hope this article has been helpful to most who read it. But I’m sure there are a few of you out there who needed it more than others. And to you, I encourage you to not only explore musical expression, but also work on your interpersonal relationships, explore your issues and fears with a professional or a friend, buy a book, and confront your demons! Music is life, and life is music, and if you can improve one, you also improve the other.

That’s interesting if people have asked you that, they obviously know a thing or two about violin!!!
I teach the Franco-Belgian bow hold, as opposed to the Russian style bow hold. (Check out videos of Heifetz or MIlstein for an example of the Russian style, straight fingers, not such an active colle’)

To the topic, I say…dressing up very nicely helps with emotions….wear a little bling. Wear something you don’t wear to any other function. Put on some jewellery or a watch that you don’t wear any where else. Special shoes will help too. Before a performance take the time to pull these special things out of your closet, dress up and strut around the house a bit enjoying your nice duds that you bought special for your performances. It sets your head to the area that you are a performer and not at home at your kitchen table playing. Dressing up gives you attitude. If ya can’t play as well as you would like to, at least you’ll look good and that smile you struggle with will be a lot easier to squeeze out if you are dressed like a performer.

Good input, Sue. You are talking about part of the psychology of performing.
It reminds me a little of Billy Crystal’s character he had….remember, “If you look good, you FEEL good!”
We could tweak it: “If you look good, you SOUND good!”

I agree some nice duds helps to put in into a performing frame of mind.

Great stuff, Lora. I too was raised in a “closed off emotionally” family. As a songwriter, guitarist, pianist, brass player, and producer, I have struggled with the fight between exhibiting my emotions through my songs versus desiring to stay “safe” and keep things “anonymous”. This series is really helpful. Thanks again for the great posts…

Dear Lora,
I would like to share with you something I encountered last evening.

So there I was cooking, cleaning and trying to squeeze in being a Suzuki mom. It was that dreaded time after dinner for music practice, cos afternoons are excuses and always “too early” for practice, according to my starting to “assert her own opinion” 7 y o. If I assert my routine, I have an unhappy child playing ruefully.

She screams when she gets a note wrong. She is upset when I ask for a correction of a mistake and so on and so forth. It has come to the point that each practice is a scream – yell – mom being patient until she loses it – session.

Last night I decided that this was it. I asked her “Would you like to practice tonight?” My daughter said yes. (She does Suzuki piano book 1 and Suzuki violin book 2. She started with the violin and went on to piano when we were got a hand me down piano. We took lessons leisurely and will see how far we get with the piano). The Suzuki piano pieces were short pieces and one of the important things were to listen listen listen to the sound you produced.

At the piano, I asked her and gave her 3 options:
Was the piece played well (good tone, harmony, phrasing)?
If it wasn’t played well, do you want to skip correction?
Or, if it wasn”t played well, do you want to correct it.

When she said she wanted to do a correction for one piece, I unbelievable saw her controlling her individual hands and body like a professional pianist at the piano. Her hands moved carefully, she used her body to help her hands. She played expressively and well if you asked me. This is a 7 year old who only thinks of goofing around much of the time, not that she hates music.

If she didn’t want to correct a mistake, I allowed her to skip it. I am not a perfect Suzuki mom anymore. But I asked her to at least be honest with me and tell me if she played well or not in the first place. At least she judges and thinks about her own playing. Thing is, most of the time she wanted to correct the mistakes!

I don’t know if my ” new” method above works. But at least the session was pleasant with little screaming and yelling.
It also allowed me to witness expressiveness for the very first time….

Hi Linda
Your story made me tear up just a little!
It is so precious to watch parent/child teams….through struggles, and to victory. THe process strengthens your relationship, if you know when to let go, as you have demonstrated.

When I first started reading….I knew exactly the advice I was going to give you, and it was exactly what you did. That approach is not right for every child’s personality, and in fact could backfire….but your daughter obviously cares and has pride in what she does….feed that!

Make sure the compliments flow freely when she does something especially well.
Another thing that can motivate your daughter’s personality type is to emulate certain artists. (sometimes showing a child another child close their age totally NAILING an advanced piece, it shows them the possibilities, enlarges the picture) But you can also emulate adult artists. With YouTube, it is so easy to ingest good stuff……but LIVE concerts have a particular magic, if that’s possible for you.

Anyway, thank you for sharing this wonderful story! You are doing a GREAT job!

Great series, Lora. I appreciate your personal transparency in these topics – it helps me understand how to connect with the fiddle. The phrasing thing … I tend to hear music as a conversation, a personal interaction, and am surprised when another player “quotes” a conversation (plays a piece), and their quote is different from what I heard. For me, most of the time that shows up in the bowing. that is true even in the very simple stuff that I can play. Keep up the great work :). Jarl